by E. H. Young
He informed his family as it gathered round the supper table that he had expected the day’s news. The annexation earlier in the year of a country speaking the same language and with many of the same ideals and traditions, was a natural development. The two nations were not foreign to each other, they were relatives: both would benefit through setting up house together, and that process had now been properly completed.
“Moreover,” he went on, “good temper could not be expected of a hungry nation, or of a hungry man,” he added, smilingly offering himself as the exception to the rule. “You will see,” he continued perseveringly, for the only response to this little sally was Rhoda’s contemplative stare, “how much pleasanter I am when I have finished this excellent meal. It will be the same in Europe or I am much mistaken. I hope you agree with me, Bertha.”
“You have not told us what you are talking about,” she said.
“But you know, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know,” she said.
“And yet I carried off the paper before you had a chance to look at it,” he said, and Rhoda, knowing what he would be at, turned, not too quickly, to look at her mother. “Or do you housewives discuss international affairs when you meet in the shops?”
Mrs. Blackett replied indirectly and with her usual calm, “Piers was here this afternoon.”
“Oh, he was, was he? Well, no doubt he gave you the facts correctly, but I hope you were suspicious of his comments.”
“He did not make any,” she said quietly.
“In a hurry, perhaps.”
“No, he was here for tea.”
“And adapted his conversation to his estimate of feminine intelligence, was that it? You are not used to that, Flora. I’m surprised you put up with that.”
Like someone pulling in a kite, Flora dragged her thoughts back to earth. “What?” she said vaguely.
The little pink spots appeared on her father’s cheeks. “When people are gathered together for a meal,” he said, “it is common courtesy to pay attention to what is said and done there. Even if you are bored by it. Even if you think it beneath your notice. And here is something of real interest and importance.”
“Cousin Piers?” she said.
“Cousin Piers? Of course not!”
“But you were talking about him, and so—” Flora saved herself by leaving her sentence eloquently unfinished and giving him a smiling glance. “And I know about the news from Mother’s paper.”
“I see,” said Mr. Blackett. “And Rhoda too?”
“Yes,” Rhoda said.
“And what do you think about it?”
“I don’t know enough to have an opinion.” She was relying on Miss Spanner to give her one when next she had a chance to go across the road.
“And as you think things are settling down so comfortably,” Mrs. Blackett said, “what about our holiday on the Continent?”
“Oh, yes, yes!” Mary cried.
“It mightn’t be safe,” Flora murmured anxiously.
“Perfectly safe,” Mr. Blackett said. “I am sure the hungry man is now quite satisfied, but we can discuss the holiday later.”
It was very unlike Bertha to make a definite proposal, especially in the presence of the children, but then, it had been unlike her to laugh at him; it was unlike her to have a separate newspaper. How long had this been going on, he wondered, and there crept over him the horrible suspicion that they were all, yes, even Flora, humouring while they listened to him. And he had been doing his best, single-handed, to prepare the girls for intelligent citizenship. Bertha, with all her excellences, had never helped him there. She might, and this was an even worse suspicion, be actually undermining his influence with whatever inferior paper she allowed the children to read. But he rejected this idea at once. He was sure she was loyal, she trusted his judgment, it was very seldom she questioned his decisions and a little later, as he watched her pouring out his coffee, he knew that he depended on her loyalty and faith in him just as she depended on his acumen and knowledge. These, nicely mingled, were the foundations on which they had built their home. Perhaps she had her little moments of irritation with him, as he had his of disappointment with her, but that was to be expected in the happiest marriages and, in this conciliatory mood, he reproached her playfully for concealing her extravagance in taking a second paper. It was the best thing he could do about it.
“As though I should have objected!” he exclaimed.
“No, I don’t suppose you would have objected,” she said.
“So I don’t quite understand.”
“No,” Mrs. Blackett said, and, realizing that here he had come against a blank wall, he wisely turned away from it.
“And then,” he said, “wasn’t it a pity to raise the children’s hopes about a holiday?”
“It is you who need one. I don’t think you are very well.”
It is always difficult to choose between presenting oneself as a person nobly struggling against ill health or as one of magnificent physique; each aspect evokes admiration and, on the whole, Mr. Blackett preferred the more masculine one, but the little laugh he gave could refer, as she chose, to either.
“Restless,” Mrs. Blackett went on calmly. “You don’t settle down to your reading as you did before we came here, and you don’t sleep so well. Perhaps the climate doesn’t suit you. I wonder if you ought to see a doctor. But what you really ought to do is to go away, by yourself or with Flora.”
“I shouldn’t think of indulging myself like that and leaving you at home.”
“Oh, we should be very happy, Rhoda and Mary and I. It would be quite a holiday for us too.”
“You are not very complimentary,” he said.
“And Connie could have hers at the same time. That would suit me very well. I think you might feel quite different when you came back. Your mind would be refreshed. You would have other things to think about.”
“But I don’t want to feel different!” Mr. Blackett exclaimed irritably. “And as for my mind, I wasn’t aware that it showed signs of flagging.”
“Oh no,” Mrs. Blackett said pleasantly, “it’s too active,” and she gave him one of her rare, full looks. “Like a squirrel in a cage,” she added and carried away the tray before he could reply.
He would not have known what to say if she had stayed, he did not know what to think. She had made an insulting simile and told him his mental state was hopeless and futile, referring, of course, to the worry of the times which no reasonable man could forget though he made light of them, but her words were apt in a different sense from that, a sense of which she knew nothing, though it was her fault that he knew so much. He left his chair and paced up and down the room. Her very virtues were her failings and now he freely admitted that the stress he had laid on her delightful modesty and the pleasant excitement he derived from it, was his noble effort to be mentally faithful to her. That sort of modesty in a woman of her age was simply ridiculous. It was not modesty; it was coldness. What wonder then that he should be obsessed by the thought of that woman next door, ripe and ardent and inviting, almost within his reach and only out of it because his conscience denied what his flesh affirmed, and there passed through his mind again all the little pictures of her he had collected. He saw her smiling teasingly at him from the balcony, standing on the hill, a different and almost a formidable person then, and, in bewildering contradiction, outside her own door at midnight with a man’s arms round her. Mr. Blackett saw this picture less clearly than the others. He blurred it purposely. He did not want to find a simple explanation of this extraordinary behaviour. He wanted all the evidence he could get to confirm his conception of the woman’s character. All this was his pastime and his torment and the prospect of leaving it for a holiday by himself was very bleak, with Flora it was even bleaker, but he could imagine one of a different kind, with another companion and in another count
ry where it would be possible to forget the Square and Upper Radstowe and his office and his wife and children, where no one would look suspiciously askance and, under a warmer sun, he would shed layer after layer of the propriety and discretion imposed on him by his circumstances and his respectable upbringing, he would be the self no one had ever seen, rejuvenated and satisfied in every sense. And he saw himself in corduroy trousers and a coloured shirt, letting the latent Bohemian in him have proper play. Somewhere in France, he thought, though the words were not altogether agreeable; he had heard them too often in another connection. It was a country which, unlike many of his generation, he did not know. He was careful not to publish the fact. His only foreign excursion had been to Italy with Bertha and this had been a resource—there had been fighting in Italy—when people spoke of that now almost forgotten war. For a time it had been a tender and exquisite memory and so it would have remained if the bud he had taken there had ever opened into a flower. It had never opened; it never would; it had tightened like a rosebud caught by frost. But where had the frost come from? Not from him. It was in the very nature of Bertha herself and he had been wronged, he had been cheated, he was justified in anything he chose to do. Yet, he thought, as his sense of injury died down a little, this imperfection had one merit: no one could look at her and doubt her virtue and he was sure of her. In a touchingly abiding way, she loved him. Women did, he thought, straightening his tie in front of a glazed representation of Salisbury Cathedral which gave back his image, and behind his face with its little pointed beard, behind the spire of the cathedral he saw other scenes.
“But I wonder if I should really enjoy it?” he thought, with dismay for his limitations and pride in his high moral sense.
Chapter XXIII
It was a pleasant room, the one opening on to the garden, and Miss Spanner had taken pains with the supper table, setting on it a bunch of pink roses and their leaves to match the salmon and raspberries, the peas and cucumber, and she had polished the worn old silver.
“Is it a special occasion?” Sandra asked. “We haven’t forgotten your birthday, have we, and left you to do all this for yourself?”
“I don’t consider my birthday worth celebrating, by me or anyone else,” Miss Spanner replied gloomily. “And I was born in November, one of the nastiest months in the year.” She gave the salmon a prod with a fork. “I hope it’s done properly.”
“Yes, it comes away from the bone beautifully,” Sandra said. “It’s exactly right.” She looked anxiously at Miss Spanner. She was not sure whether she was really unhappy or merely embarrassed by her own generosity. She had been very sharp-tongued after she had given Chloe and the boys the money for their holidays. “But,” she said, after a moment’s thought, “it would have been horrid for us if you hadn’t been born at all,” and Miss Spanner’s nose had to sustain another knock.
“It wouldn’t have made the slightest difference to any of you.”
“What about Mother?”
Miss Spanner flushed under the eyes in an unbecoming way she had. “Now, don’t argue with me,” she said, “but go and bang the gong.”
Sandra obeyed slowly. Miss Spanner was behaving as though she knew she had not long to live and must do all she could for other people before she went. Death was dreadful, Sandra thought. One forgot about it and then suddenly realized that it came, in time, to everybody, even to the young, even to the people one loved best, and she touched the gong very softly, as though a loud noise might precipitate disaster.
“That’s no good,” Felix said as he and James came out of their bedroom. “Let me do it,” and he took the stick from her and beat so loud a summons that Rosamund, at the head of the stairs, put her hands to her ears and Sandra, seeing her mother there, rejected her thoughts of death. This was life now coming down the stairs and the noise Felix was making changed from one of doom to one of triumph. He stopped with a final bang and gave Paul a light rap with the stick as he came, protesting, from the sitting-room.
“Go and wash your hands,” Felix said.
“Mind your own business,” said Paul, preparing to dodge another blow, but Felix took the remark calmly. He was in a good temper, Sandra observed. That was a comfort. Sometimes he was rather glum or irritable and he was the kind of person whose moods affected his company.
“Let me see your hands, Paul,” Rosamund said. She had bathed and changed and smelt faintly of dusting powder.
“You’d think he might be responsible for them himself, at his age,” Felix said.
“You never were. You were the worst of the lot. Yes, they’ll do. Now, come along. Let’s make a party of it.”
“But where’s Chloe?” Sandra said.
“We can’t wait for her and when we’ve finished,” Felix said, “let’s drink Miss Spanner’s health.”
“What in?” asked James.
“She wouldn’t like it in anything but water.”
“No, don’t,” Sandra begged. “I think it might make her feel uncomfortable.”
“Of course it will,” Felix said cheerfully. “That’s part of the fun and she’ll enjoy remembering it afterwards. In planning pleasure for yourself or other people, that’s the important thing. Less pleasure at the moment but more next morning.”
Sandra looked at her mother for support but she did not get it. Rosamund was not feeling very tender towards Agnes. Besides, Felix was right. She would squint atrociously, but she would be pleased afterwards and now, at the sight of her anxious face, Rosamund forgot to be annoyed with her.
“Oh Agnes, how pretty it all looks!” she exclaimed. “And what a meal! It’s too good for anything but complete concentration. We won’t talk, we’ll just eat.”
“And when I want to do that,” Paul said, “I’m told it’s bad manners.”
“So it is. Let’s all be bad mannered.”
“And without any restraining thoughts of fish cakes to-morrow,” James suggested.
“But leave some for Chloe,” Sandra said.
“And Agnes must sit at the head of the table,” said Rosamund. “It’s her party.”
“Oh dear, what a fuss about nothing,” Miss Spanner grumbled, but how happy she would be, she thought, if she had planned this little feast for yesterday. Then it would have been an honest gift; it was meanly and uselessly propitiatory to-day, and though Rosamund did not know everything—she did not know the worst—she knew enough to see this gift for what it was and in her gaiety, her sweetness towards herself, Miss Spanner fancied there was a spice of mischief. And yet it might be pure happiness that made her eyes so bright and, if so, where had she found it? James came rather near to answering this question.
“I had a nice walk, Miss Spanner,” he said, “and I’m very grateful to you for making me go.”
“I didn’t make you go anywhere,” she said with unnecessary heat, “except to fetch the cucumber.”
“You influenced me though and, quite by chance, I found my mother in compromising circumstances.”
“No, not compromising, James. Unusual, perhaps.”
“All right, unusual, and I believe she would have been there still if I hadn’t brought her home.”
“Yes.” It amused her to see Felix pricking up his ears and Agnes setting her wits to work. She wondered doubtingly whether James could possibly be producing these effects on purpose and she laughed at him across the table as though she shared the little conspiracy. “Yes. I was very comfortable. A nice place and a nice day,” she said and steadied herself for what he might say next, but at that moment Chloe slipped into the room and into her chair with a murmured apology.
“Was your train late?” Felix asked.
“What? No, I don’t think so.”
“But you are, very.”
“Yes, I walked home.” She did not notice or she ignored a tone she would normally have resented.
; “All the way from the station? Couldn’t you get into a bus?” asked Sandra, ready to be sympathetic.
“I didn’t want to.” She looked like someone who had come out of very strong sunshine and was still dazed by it or, contrariwise, had been in a dark place and could not yet adapt herself to the light.
“I don’t believe you know what you’re eating,” said Paul with disgust.
“Oh, salmon. Yes, how nice,” she said.
“It’s Agnes’s party,” her mother said.
“How kind,” said Chloe, discovering Miss Spanner at the head of the table, and Rosamund, watching her, saw that she was beginning to come back from wherever she had been and pictured her walking rather blindly through the crowded streets, up the steep Slope and so to these quiet roads where, when the lamps were lit, the shadows of the overhanging trees made dark pools on the pavement through which one could walk dryshod. But this was a summer evening, the lamps were not lighted yet and Rosamund was sorry Chloe had not walked to-night, as she had so often done herself, through those pools of shadow, sometimes quite still and sometimes seeming to be ruffled by a little wind. For the continuance of a dream or the easing of trouble she had always found them good, she did not know why, unless it was because she got from them something of what Agnes got from poetry, something transcending self, in these reflections of what she called reality. But, whether Chloe was in need of solace or guarding her happiness in a mist of her own making, it was impossible to tell until she came into her mother’s room that night and, because she came, Rosamund knew she was not bringing trouble. She would have battled with that alone.